


Tumblr Ficlet Prompts: ReedxStella

by neednot



Category: The Fall (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-07-18 21:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7331341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of all the prompts I've answered on Tumblr for Reed x Stella. Suggestions and prompts always welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unsaid

It’s more what she didn’t say. 

When Stella’s lips left hers all Reed could manage was a soft “Oh,” a sigh barely escaping her lips. 

It wasn’t their first kiss. It was the first after she turned Stella’s invitation down. 

She didn’t think it would happen again. But she found herself accepting Stella’s invitation to drive her home because of the rain, found herself enjoying the other woman’s company like she had that other night. The air between them in the car was charged and electric and almost frightening.

When Stella stops the car and looks at Reed, it’s all she can do not to keep her heart from clawing its way out of her chest. 

And then Stella leans forward and kisses her, and Reed kisses her back. She tangles her fingers in that fine blonde hair and pulls Stella closer against her, kissing her hard, like she’s always meant to. 

And when she pulls back, all she can manage is “Oh.” 

She hopes Stella hears what she means.  _I’m sorry for the other night and I like you and screw complications and husbands because you’re what I want._

She thinks she does, and her response is to lean in and kiss Reed back. And in that Reed hears.

_It’s all right. I like you too._

Stella pulls away after a minute and leaves Reed aching. She smirks, that smile Reed’s become too used to seeing. 

“Come inside?” she says, and the invitation isn’t lost on either of them. 

If it’s an invitation that happens every time they kiss Reed will never get anything done again. But maybe that’s for the best, too.


	2. Things You Said After We Fell In Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking prompts over at my tumblr: need-not.tumblr.com

It’s not love, at first. Just a gradual acceptance of the other’s company; a mutual understanding and trust. Spector is gone, dead, front page news and then nothing more than an article a few pages back. 

Stella and Reed are never mentioned. Neither is Rose. The three living casualties of the Spector case, save for his wife and children. 

They slip away after it’s over, back to London, to the area of Reed’s childhood, where Stella prefers to be. It’s unspoken they’ll go together. They’re both hollowed out after this, they need to get away. 

Reed doesn’t realize it’s love until later. And maybe it isn’t, at first. They don’t say the words out loud for awhile. 

But Reed realizes, looking back, they’ve said them in other ways. In Stella’s smile at her across the breakfast table, in the way Reed reads textbooks to her at night to fall asleep, how she whispers the anatomy terms into her skin when they’re having sex. It’s filling themselves up with each other and slowly starting to become whole again. 

And then she finally says it. Reed’s surprised, she thought she’d be the one to say the words first but it’s Stella who does. 

Reed wakes up at 3am after a particularly nasty nightmare involving the corpse of Spector when she realizes Stella isn’t in bed with her. She pads through their small apartment to find the smaller woman sitting on the couch, Reed’s anatomy book open on her lap. 

“What’re you doing?” 

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Stella says. “And it soothes me when you read these so I thought… I thought I’d come do it myself.”

“Is it working?” 

“I much prefer your voice,” Stella says, and Reed sits down on the couch across from her, smiles as Stella stretches her feet onto her lap. 

“Read to me,” Reed says, and Stella obliges, filling her head with scientific names and reminding Reed of the song she sang as a child. 

“ _The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone.”_

She hums it without realizing she’s doing it, and when she looks over at Stella moments later she realizes she’s stopped reading and is looking at her with that crooked smirk. 

“What?” 

Stella leans forward, then, and kisses Reed lightly. “I love you,” she says against her mouth, and lays her head on Reed’s shoulder. 

“I love you, too,” Reed says, and she feels the shattered pieces of her heart slowly repairing themselves with the words.


	3. Things You Said That Made Me Feel Real

She has never felt real. 

Truthfully, she’s always felt like a construct. Something made-up, half-formed, a ghost of a woman, an image for people to project their fantasies on.

She supposes she does nothing to discourage that, and yet. 

The doctor called it dissociating when she described the phenomenon as a teenager. Result of trauma, he said, and she hated the word then like she does now. 

It’s why she wears a hair band on her wrist, what she told Rose. It helps. The pain reminds her she is here, she is real, she does exist. 

And then there’s Reed. 

Reed keeps her tethered. Reed keeps her grounded, and Stella doesn’t know if it’s the way she looks at her or the feeling of her mouth on hers, but Reed make her feel whole. 

She doesn’t tell Reed about the dissociation because she doesn’t want Reed to worry, but Reed figures it out nonetheless. 

“Stella?” 

Stella starts. She doesn’t know where she is, where she went, but she feels Reed’s fingers lightly resting on her elbow. 

“Sorry,” she murmurs. She blinks, looks around. 

She’s in Reed’s apartment, sitting on the sofa. Truthfully she can’t remember how she got on the sofa. She remembers walking in the door, setting her keys on the counter, and now…

She plucks at the band on her wrist before she thinks about it, winces at the pain, forgetting that Reed is in the room.

“Are you all right?” Reed asks softly. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Where’d you go?” 

“Nowhere,” Stella says, standing up, smoothing her hands over her skirt, suddenly in control. “I just…”

“You’ve been doing it more,” Reed says. “Since the case.”

“I know,” Stella says.

“Can I help?” 

Stella’s instinct is to say no. 

But this is Reed. Whom she trusts. 

“I just… get outside myself,” Stella says. “Like I’m not here. Like I’m not real.” 

She feels Reed come up behind her and rub her shoulders. Instinctively, she arches against her.

“How can I remind you you’re real?” Reed murmurs against her neck. “I know you have the bands.” 

“You can’t do this all the time,” Stella says as Reed kisses along her jaw. 

“I can now,” Reed says, and she turns Stella so she’s facing her, presses her against the wall of her apartment. “You’re real,” she says, kissing down to her collarbone, unbuttoning her blouse. “You’re real, you’re here.” One hand slides up her skirt. “You’re real.” 

Stella moans, and the sound of her own voice reminds her—she’s here, she’s real, and with Reed— 

She’s whole.


	4. tossing and turning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on tumblr for @mirandaputsherbestbuttforward

The water is cool and inviting against her skin, her muscles, the chlorine smell filling her nose its own kind of strange perfume.

This is her home, her calming space. Has been ever since she was a child. She was always afraid of the sea, of the tossing and turning of waves, but she loved the pool, the rhythm of a back and forth movement.

Her father always said she took to water like a fish, would throw her in when his back permitted. And it’s here she feels closest to him, to herself, to someone she once was.

Back and forth and back and forth, freestyle because it’s easiest, breaststroke when she feels like it. Goggles on and hair cap on and tattoo on her wrist clearly visible. She’s in her own private world, her private space, can hear nothing except water rushing through her ears.

When she reaches the end of the lane, there’s a pair of shoes, motorcycle boots, where she can see.

She grips the edge of the pool, pulls her goggles off, and looks up at Reed.

“Might I join you?”

The pathologist is still unfamiliar to her. Sure, the lingering glances and ways Reed’s hands trail over her skin tell her something.

“Pool’s free.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Reed says, smiling softly. “If you need this to be your own time I can go.”

“Stay,” Stella says. She reaches up, touches the inside of Reed’s brown wrist with her fingers. “I can get out, if you like.”

Reed holds up a gym bag. “No need. I did come to swim. I’ll go change. Didn’t mean to interrupt your routine.”

Stella pulls her cap and goggles back on, and kicks off from the side of the pool, aware this time of Reed’s eyes on her.

But when she reaches the end again, Reed’s gone, off to the locker room.

Stella can’t shake her from her head. She swims while Reed changes, lap after lap after lap to clear her head.

But her head is filled with dark brown eyes and her ears are filled with Reed’s soft voice and when she surfaces again Reed’s next to her, in a dark navy suit and her own cap, stepping into the pool.

Stella can’t take her eyes off her, and she’s grateful the goggles are mirrored.

“Are we going to swim or not?” Reed asks, and before Stella can answer she pushes off from the wall gracefully and begins a butterfly stroke down her lane.

And Stella joins her, side by side, the water calming and lapping and soothing.

But she still can’t get Reed’s eyes out of her head.


End file.
